Several industrial applications require the separation of large area structures into smaller sub-structures. One common example is the structuring of thin film solar panels formed on glass substrates. With regard to the formation of thin film solar panels, surface patterning is used to define individual areas or cells, while at the same time monolithically integrating the individual cells of a panel to provide a specific output voltage. A key requirement of surface patterning is to minimize the scribe area in order to maximize the active area and efficiency of a module. Typically, the efficiency of a module is reduced by 5-10% due to the inactive scribe area. As appreciated by those skilled in the art, the inactive scribe area may be minimized by optimizing the width of the individual scribe lines (i.e., making the lines as narrow as possible) while avoiding shorts and other contact problems.
Generally speaking, the serialization or parallelization of solar modules is realized in the prior art through a laser cutting process that is manually performed. One disadvantage of this process results from the manual positioning of the cutting edge and the width. Particularly, during the manufacturing process, surface patterning has to be applied several times (after each individual material deposition step) which can lead to overlay matching issues. Therefore, what is needed is an improved system and method that is capable of precise alignment of scribe patterns in order to overcome overlay matching problems during the manufacture of thin film panels.